On a related note, Jamie and I and a couple other certified neeerrrrrrds used to play Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu RPG, set in the world created by H.P. Acquisition of "mythos knowledge" was an integral part of the game. Essentially, what happened was if your character found some grim tome/artifact/Civil War chess set (no, really) and decided to read/examine/utilize/cast a haphazard glance at it, you would acquire knowledge of the Lovecraftian world and use it to become more powerful and to fend off the grim slavering insane extradimensional beings whom you'd be better off not knowing about. However, with each point of knowledge there was a concomitant loss of sanity, which in my opinion was the most valuable character trait you possessed. Failure to make a "sanity roll" meant your character could flat out lose it in crucial situations and could become Alpo. My character, a 20s PI armed like Mad Max in Thunderdome, steadfastly refused to read/handle/glance at any of the "weird crap."

"No, you can curl up with Abdul Alhazred's long lost Moaning and Bleeding Codex of Ghastly Ends, Professor Twitchy. I'll be over here cleaning the sawed-off. Oh, and by 'over here,' I mean Maryland."